Inventory, Attack Rating, and HUD Tweaking

Sunrise at PW Dunes, click for larger view.

Baba’s still working on level 138. Ever since he hit level 136, leveling for Baba at Perpetual Wastelands Borg spots has slowed way down. Where he used to get 90 to 100k for each Borg, it is has dropped down to around 60-70k now, so it is taking much longer to level there than it did before. As a result of having to fell more Borg per level, Baba is amassing quite a decent Miy’s armor collection.

He went to try and organize it some and turned to a program he has used for several years, the Anarchy Online Inventory System from halorn. Unfortunately it does not recognize Miy’s armor and only identifies the quality level, but not the type. As an alternative, Baba tried out the Anarchy Online Backpack Parser found here.

The AOBP is actually more convenient to use than the AOIS because it only requires you to move a bag from the bank to inventory to get the contents. The extra step of having to actually open each back pack is eliminated. When going through an entire bank, this saves a good deal of time. The program also offers quite a few options in terms of output formats, csv, txt, html, etc. What made Baba happy, is that it does recognize his Miy’s armor and another big plus is that it parses the backpack names which makes it easy to actually locate the items.

Baba relied on AOBP to help him come up with his current almost all Miy’s armor outfit. Using AOPB it was easy to copy the Miy’s entries over to a spreadsheet where he could further sort and organize it.

When he was done he had a list sorted by Miy’s type of his collection. He was able then to pick out and quickly locate the highest level Miy’s ranged pieces he had.

The reason he choose Ranged my surprise you. Why not the Tank, or Scary? Tank would be ideal but for one factor. It buffs 2 hand blunt skill, which is useless to Baba. The Ranged is almost identical except it buffs two useless skills to Baba rather than one, but, the equip requirements are Agility and Strength. With Ranged, Baba can equip higher quality levels than with the Tank that requires Stamina and Strength. Baba can equip QL 172 Ranged and QL 133 Tank, so for the time being, Ranged is the better choice since it yields higher buffs and AC protection.

Another detail Baba became aware of during this exercise was how items that buff your primary weapon skills, increase your attack rating. He had been wearing a pair of 130 Rhinoman leather gloves. When she switched them out for some 172 Ranged gloves, his attack rating went down a point. The Rhinoman leather gloves have buffs for 2 hand edged, Fast attack and Dimach which are supported by his current weapon, the Panther. This also highlights one other reason for using the Ranged or Tank Miy’s. They both buff strength and stamina, which have very strong trickle down to his weapon skills.

Since Ranged and Tank Miy’s buff 2 enforcer primary skills, strength and stamina, Baba realized that it would be in his best interest if he cast all his self buffs in order to be able to equip the highest level Miy’s he could. Once he did that he was able to get into pieces ranging from 184 to 168. See his latest set up here.

Baba has also been working on his always engaged HUD layout and made a few more tweaks recently. He moved several attack special rings out an open backpack to sit in his main inventory. The reason for doing this, is so they can be made into hot buttons on his hot key bars. He moved his health kit and nano recharge hot key buttons to a secondary hot bar. He then put the hot keys for the rings into the recently vacated primary hot bar slots. Now when kiting Borg or in any combat, he can use these rings without having to change hand positions or using the mouse. Baba has found, and others report in the forums that mouse control can lag at times, at least compared to hot key response.

Now Baba’s attack specials available to him on his primary hot bar include,

• Flurry of Blows
• Library of Foul Language
• Ring of Eternal Night
• Tattered Flame Ring
• Bloodleech Ring
• Weeping Flesh Ring
• Memory Loss Ring

Baba uses Flurry as often as he can, but due to it’s cool down, it works out to about every other Borg.

He uses the Library of Foul Language only when everything else is on cool down, or when in teams and then it is used to get and keep aggro. Because of their cool down rates, Baba cycles between Eternal Night, Tattered Flame, Bloodleech, and Weeping Flesh, so that he can use at least one in every fight. He rarely uses the memory loss ring, keeping it around for team situations where it could be used to wipe a mobs hate list so Baba can then hit the mob and become it’s new number one on the hate list, and hopefully saving the squishy that the mob may have been attacking. None of these are knockout or even equivalent of an average hit from his current weapon, but they do help shorten the time it takes to bring a mob down.

Baba usually carries 6-7 loot bags currently, so when they fill up, it’s time to transfer the good to our Trader Tireen who fences them for top credit amounts. Recently while feeding loot to the Trader shop terminal in Newland City, another player noticed her Solar Powered Backpack and commented favorably on it. Baba now sees them listed on the shopping channel for 40 million credits. Then just a few nights later, while waiting for Babaente to show up, Tireen spotted a level 50 twink sporting the same back pack. This twink was an enforcer, so the Solar Powered backpack actually grows or shrinks according to the breed that is wearing it. When worn by an enforcer, it appears to be twice as big as Tireen’s.

More Leveling at PW Dunes

Tightly packed Borg at PW Dunes, click image for larger version

Baba rubbed the sleep out of his ancient eyes and rose from his sleeping couch to lurch into his ‘living room’.  He moved slowly, so as to not aggravate his sore muscles, out of practice and a still a bit out of shape, following his recent leveling PW Borg Hunt.  As his hands groped in his closet for his new Miy’s Scary Body armor, to start suiting up for another outing, a small portion of still active brain cells reminded him that there was another task which needed his attention before he faces the Borg again.

Grabbing some hot Java from his ‘kitchenette’ that folds out of one wall, and a toroidal sugar encrusted calorie delivery ring some crazy archaeologist claimed recently on ‘In the Ether Tonight‘ that ancient cultures called a donut, Baba sat down and activated his HUD display for allocating IP points.  As an Atrox Enforcer, the process was fairly simple, always max his basic skills and his combat skills (2 hand edged, Brawling, Fast Attack, Physical Init). Baba only gives a point or two to Dimach, as the weapons requirements for it are generally low and it has not been that useful to Baba.

Baba always reviews a section of his IP spreadsheet that lists in order of quality, all of the Enforcer nanos, along with their requirements and these are coded to change color to indicate when he has enough IP points to equip them.  He was delighted to find that he was within striking distance of equipping two nanos.  The first improvement was with the jump from Essence of Cyclops to Essence of Titan which heaps on 189 more health points (Essence of Titan total is +590 health points to the +401 of Cyclops.  It also adds +3 more to Stamina and Strength, plus another +1 to scale. In his Shields line, he would be able to move from Barbaric Blades to Lightening Shield which adds another +54 health, +5 more to all Shield ACs and +160 to Energy AC.  (Total health for Lightening is 310).  Together with the additional ACs and health he gained the previous visit to PW from his new Miy’s Scary Body armor, Baba should be somewhat less squishy when hitting +175 level Borg at the PW dunes.

Once his IP were doled out, Baba strolled over the the Advanced Shop in Newland City to pick up the Lighting Shield Nano (he already had a Essence of Titan he had found as loot.)  A furtive check of the Enforcer nano terminal told him the nano he wanted was not there, he needed to be shopping in a superior shop.  Superior shop usually means superior prices, Enforcer nanos jump from tens of thousands at the advanced shop to hundreds of thousands at the superior shop.  This was a job for his trader friend Tireen who could buy the same items for a considerable discount compared Baba.
He sent her a quick personal tell request and logged off.

Tireen, an omni trader not above dealing with toons from any side (credits are credits), took the ICC whompa from Newland City and then to Omni Trade.  She made a bee line from the Omni Trade whompa to one of the superior shops and made sure to cast her trading buffs before opening the Enforcer terminal.  She found the Lightning Shield nano listed there for 300,000 credits and she purchased one.  She then made her way back to Newland City where she passed the item to Babaente, who then met up with Baba.  Babaente gave him the new nano, and Baba gave her the 300,000 credits to cover the cost.  Baba was not going to freeload off those at lower levels than him.

Baba equipped his new nanos and added them to his hotkey bars.  He then headed out to Perpetual Wastelands determined to spend at least an hour hunting Borg.  When he arrived at the dunes, he found plenty of Borg and no competitors.  He touched down at his usual spot north of the dunes by the cliff wall and proceeded to buff up. It was his usual buffs including the hacked boosted graft Hasty Augmentation Cloud, and his two new nanos, Lightning Shield and Essence of Titan.  Popping another anniversary experience stim, he set off down to the southern end of the dune to say Hi to a Borg.

Close call, click image to for better view of what is left of Baba's health bar.

The random dispersion of Borg at the dunes always seems to vary.  Today they appeared to be somewhat more closely packed than they usually are.  Baba had to exercise more caution during the first half hour, trying to avoid pulling more than one Borg at a time.  They were all so close that at least on three separate pulls, he ended up with 4 to 3 Borg on his case.  The 4 Borg kite almost sent him back to reclaim.  Baba was down to 25% as he wore down the last Borg in that kite.  If he had not be able to use a first aid stim while on the run, he would not have made it.  The problem with kiting multiple high level Borgs, is that it only takes a few mistakes to use up Baba’s absorb layers, and after that all it takes is two solid hits and a crit, to obliterate most of Baba’s health.

The PW Dune Borgs seem to have 3 types of damage, melee, energy and projectile (depending on type of gun.)  During this outing Baba’s logs show Borg melee hits averaging 436 damage, their Energy shots averaging 449 damage, and their projectile shots doing around 490. He did wince when he saw a 936 melee critical from one of the Generals.  This of course will vary for others due to differences in player armor and protection buffs.

Ding 133 off Borg at PW Dunes, still over 3 mil in experience pool, click image for larger view

By the time 45 minutes had passed, he had chipped the Borg down to handful.  Baba started pulling his Borg a shorter distance from the rest, to avoid running out the clock. He wanted to level on a single charge of the experience stims.  He only has a handful of them and he wants to make them all count.  Near the end of the hour he could see two things converging.  His experience bar was edging toward being full and gaining a level,and his experience stim count down was down to 5 minutes.  Pausing only to  re-cast his damage buffs, and his major nanos, and he went to work the remaining Borg.  Things went well and he dinged 133 with 2 minutes left to go on his  experience stim.

Baba strolled back to his ‘safe’ spot north of the dunes, and proceeded to sort through tonight’s loot.  While in the field, he usually just sorts out the Miy’s armor to a separate bag so he can inspect it in detail and equip then and there of possible.  He was quite happy to find the Miy’s Tank Body armor piece was both a higher quality level than his current body armor, and had requirements he can meet.  He took a minute to bring up his equipment HUD panel and go through the technical part of equipping it. With that done, he took the actual previous Miy’s piece off and the put on the new QL 168 Tank Body armor. The Miy’s Tank piece offers some nice improvements over his previous 151 Miy’s Scary Body part. The new Tank gives +12 health, +102 all AC’s +13 Stamina, +10 Strength, +21 max nano and a really helpful -3 nano cost reduction.